


Dragon Age Prompt Blurbs

by IrLaimsaAraLath



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Choke Play, Cute, F/M, Fluff, Hurt No Comfort, NSFW, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2018-12-18 00:21:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11862726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrLaimsaAraLath/pseuds/IrLaimsaAraLath
Summary: A collection of blurbs based on Dragon Age prompts.  Will update tags and such as content is added.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> @zanidragon Thanks for the prompt, and I’m sorry it took so long! I had to think about it. 
> 
> This is based off of Zani’s two prompts ( 2. “I swear it won’t happen again.” and/or 4. “You can’t keep doing this.” from the writing prompts ask) and inspired by a fluffy Inquisition comic with kittens I can no longer find.
> 
> Cheers.

Josephine sighed heavily as she leaned back in her chair and pinched the bridge of her nose, “Tell me again how much is missing?”  With the line of her brow drawn low, the cook held up her hand and began ticking items off on her fingers, “Two quarts of milk, a wedge of our  _ best _ cheese, an almost full spool of butcher’s twine, an apple crate,” and she paused there as she tilted her head thoughtfully, “but the apples were left, and two of my aprons are missing.”  With that, she nodded once and planted her hands on her hips.  “Ambassador, really.  I can’t run a kitchen like this!  Things just go missing and I ne-,” the woman trailed off when Josephine raised a hand and offered an appeasing smile.  “I assure you that I will look into it.”  The cook offered a haughty  _ hrmph _ and nodded before turning on her heel and departing.  The Antivan puffed out a big sigh as she sat up straighter and pulled a sheaf of parchment from one of the many piles on her desk.  Missing apple crates weren’t exactly at the top of her list of important matters to which she needed to attend.

 

* * *

 

Though the intrusion of sunlight had woken her an hour ago, Niyera was still snugly tucked in bed with Solas, though she was unable to find her way back to sleep.  There was so much to do today, and she wasn’t especially thrilled for any of it.  First thing, of course, there was the war room, then, afterwards, Josephine had arranged for a meeting with some noble patriarch from Orlais that was visiting Skyhold.  Once that was finished, she owed Cassandra some time to discuss the Seeker disappearances, and she had also sworn to Scout Harding that she would inspect some new recruits with her.  None of this taking into account the pile of paperwork languishing on her desk.  With a grumbling sigh, she pulled the covers up over her head and scooched back against Solas, who responded by draping an arm around her waist.  She had just begun to settle in when she felt an odd pressure shift the pillow near her head.  The surprise of it made her jerk, and a misplaced elbow into Solas’s stomach roused him from sleep with a mumble of accusation.  

 

She shushed him with a quiet  _ shhhh _ , and suddenly the pressure moved, became four tiny points on her cheek.  A tiny  _ mew _ found her ear, and in her unreasonable excitement to pull down the covers, she accidentally elbowed Solas again.  “Vhenan...what is so important tha-,” and his words were drowned out by the sudden cooing noises Niyera was making.  The elf abandoned any hope of more sleep and opened his eyes to find the Inquisitor cradling a small grey kitten in her hands.  “Solas,” she whispered with delight, “Look.”  She turned the creature to look at him, and one brow lifted when it  _ mewed _ at him.  “I see.  Where did it come from?”  Depositing the creature on her chest, it sat for a moment as if confused, then toddled on wobbly feet over to Niyera’s face and head-butted her chin.  The smile that broke out onto her face told Solas all he needed to know; it didn’t matter where it came from.  It was staying where it was.  He shook his head and tried to suppress an indulgent smirk as he rested his head in one hand.  “Does it have a name?”  Around its neck was a small loop of twine with a torn corner of parchment attached to it.  Niyera read it, then tilted her face to Solas with a grin, “Fade.”

 

* * *

Cassandra slumped down onto the edge of her bed, dressed all but for her boots, and propped her elbows on her knees to rest her face in her hands.  She couldn’t make sense of the Seekers’ disappearance.  She couldn’t bear the thought that she might have failed them.  If she had stayed, would it have made a difference?  Could she have intervened in what has happened to them?  “Ugh,” she muttered into her hands before lifting her face from her hands.  Perhaps the Inquisitor would be willing to help her see this through.  She had to know.  

 

The Seeker was still deep in her thoughts as she reached for one of her boots, but stopped short when she saw the thing wiggle.  Just a bit.  Maker’s Grace, if that was a rat…  Cassandra sucked in a breath as she reached for the dagger on her hip.  She was just beginning to pull it free as she tugged on the mouth of the boot, when she heard a soft  _ mewl _ .  She blinked, hard, and snatched up the boot.  Reaching down into the bottom, she snagged something small and warm and fuzzy, then tugged it out of the boot.  In her grasp, she held a small black and white kitten by the nape of its neck.  Four tiny paws patted the air, and it gave a tiny  _ mew _ .  Every edge and line of the Seeker’s features softened, and she smiled as she pulled it to her chest.  There was a thin bit of twine about its neck with a scrap of parchment attached that read, “Donnen.”

 

* * *

It was late afternoon when Bull retired to the tavern for a bit of a refresher, and his bench gave a plaintive creak beneath his weight as he settled.  Always ready with a tankard for her favorite customer, the red-haired barmaid was quick to bring him a drink, and he accepted it with the same grace he always did, which is to say none at all as he winked and casually licked his lips  _ at _ her.  Well-satisfied with himself as she walked away giggling, he kicked his feet up on a stool and relaxed.  Or, tried to relax, rather.  It was still weighing on his mind, this being Tal-Vashoth business.  Looking at Krem as he sat across from him now and Dalish as she was on her way back from the bar, he couldn’t imagine having made any other choice.  But, at the same time, he felt adrift, unsure, and those were two things The Iron Bull was not accustomed to feeling.  

  
All in one breath, he drained his tankard and waggled it in the air to catch the barmaid’s attention, before he rested his arm across his chest and thoughtfully stared into the empty mug.  The scuff of a chair across the floor broke his inspection, however, and he looked up reflexively.  Just a drunk standing to leave.  When Krem cleared his throat and said, “Uhm, chief?” Bull looked back to his companion.  The younger man jerked his chin toward the Qunari’s empty tankard, and Bull turned his eyes downward.  A small, fuzzy white face stared back at him, large blue eyes blinking unassumingly.  One corner of Bull’s mouth twitched upward as the kitten lost its grip on the edge of the tankard and fell into it.  When it  _ mewed _ insistently, Bull plucked it out and sat it in one hand.  The kitten gave a fearsome hiss, and Bull smirked harder.  Around its neck was a bit of twine and a parchment scrap that read, “Charger.”

 

* * *

 

As the Inquisitor went about her day, Solas finished up a few things he was working on and eventually made his way over to the tavern.  In passing, Niyera had mentioned that Josephine had another complaint from the cook about missing supplies and food, and with the sudden introduction of kitten Fade this morning, he thought he had a decent idea who was to blame.  Solas was even more certain when he passed Cassandra in the courtyard with another of the furry creatures, then saw Bull teasing one with a bit of string as he walked up to the second level of the tavern.  With his hands clasped behind his back, he made his way over to Cole, who was sitting bent over the top of an apple crate.  As he neared, he could see two more kittens, a dish of milk, and a few cheese crumbles in the bottom of the crate atop what looked like a crumpled apron.  “You can’t keep doing this, Cole,” Solas began, but the spirit-boy interrupted as he peeked up from beneath the brim of his hat.  “I found them.  Water like ice, rolled and tumbled in a burlap trap.  Sinking, sinking, so very scared.”  Cole looked back into the crate and prodded a tabby kitten gently with a fingertip.  The ball of fuzz flopped over and attacked the finger with all four feet.  

 

“But, they’re happy now.  And, the others are happy, too.  Everyone was so tired and sad and unsure.  They made each other better.”  It was always hard to argue these points with Cole.  He was so well-meaning.  Solas leaned down and rested a hand on Cole’s shoulder, “Just stop by Josephine’s office and tell her that it won’t happen again.”  The spirit-boy tilted his head and began to protest, “But, I wi-,” and Solas cut him off with a gesture.  “I know, but it will make Josephine feel better,” he assured Cole, who responded with, “I...swear it won’t happen again,” then looked to the elf for approval.  Solas nodded as he straightened and clasped his hands behind his back again.  “Exactly thus.  And take her a kitten.  The tabby one.  That’ll help, too.”  Before he could turn to leave, Cole was gone, and he could practically hear the Ambassador’s excited squeals from here.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> @bearly-tolerable asked:
> 
> Prompt time! 62. “It’s okay to cry…” solavellan please and thank you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Solavellan angst with bestie Dorian.

The sheaf of parchment made a satisfying sound when she crushed it in her fist, a crackling then a crunch.  As it hit the stone floor at her feet, there was a soft scratching, and when it rolled into the other crumpled balls of parchment, there was a hollow whisper.  When she set the cluster of ruined parchment orbs aflame, the sound was like a chorus of leaves on a bonfire before they’d completely dried:  snick, snap, pop.   Fingers of smoke curled into the air as the fire consumed the pieces, and there was nothing left but ash when the flames died.  The fragile sooty remains were smeared under the toe of her boot before she returned to the desk at the center of the rotunda to casually rip another sheet from the leather-bound sketchbook splayed open there.  It collapsed in her fist like all the others and was discarded.  

 

Each flame that sprang from her fingertips was the barely restrained want of an inferno.  If she were to let herself, she could set fire to the entire rotunda; she would make kindling of the desk and books, bring the scaffolding down, and pile it all on top of the sofa to watch it burn.  A part of her even wanted to scour the fresco from the walls, see the plaster and pigments crack and flake and peel away.  She idly wondered if she would find anything hidden beneath it.  Was the work of art like the artist himself?  Just a carefully crafted facade used to mask cold calculation?  Either way, he deserved a commendation for his skill; how often is it that a painter is so convincing that he finds himself enraptured with his own false reality?

 

“ _ Ar lath ma, vhenan _ ,” he had said, but only when she stopped him from walking away.  “ _ You are so beautiful _ ,” he had confessed, but only after stripping from her skin the only thing she had left of her clan.  They were things she did and submitted to freely, desirous of his love and willing to forsake her past to make him her future.  After all, what did she have left if not him?  Footsteps on the stairs pulled her out of herself, and she looked up to see Dorian hovering in the archway.  The pinched confusion in his brow eased when she tore another page from the sketchbook, crumpled it, and tossed it to the ground.  His squared shoulder leaned into the arch’s frame as his arms crossed, his features briefly lit by the plume of flame that consumed the pile of scrunched parchment.  

 

Neither spoke.  Dorian simply watched, and she continued purging her grief with fire, one page at a time.  When at last the leather binding of the book sat empty, she glanced up to find him walking toward her, and as they stood toe to toe, he cupped her face between his hands.  The look in his eyes, the unending acceptance he always showed her said, “ _ It’s okay to cry _ .”  However, as she leaned into him, pressing her forehead into his chest, he knew by the tension that hardened her when he put his arms around her and the heat the lingered on her fingertips when she gripped his wrists that this was a flame she was not ready to extinguish.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niyera and Solas get fluffy drunk and stalk some frilly cakes.
> 
> Sort of a follow up to: https://irlaimsaaralath.tumblr.com/post/164428181831/of-frilly-cakes-and-chocolate-dreams
> 
> For DWC.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @thevikingwoman asked:
> 
> For DWC: “quit staring! they’ll notice us!”

It was their last night at the Winter Palace, and Solas insisted on going back to the tavern to visit Madge.  And, by “visit Madge,” he meant he wanted to watch her make more tasty drinks in  _ fancy  _ glasses for him to gorge himself on.  She had to admit, the concoctions  _ were _ exceptionally tasty, so when he asked, she readily agreed.  Between the two of them, they’d kept Madge busy for the bulk of the night, though the short woman had not seemed to mind.  Generally speaking, the apostate favored the rich, velvety drinks, flavors like vanilla and caramel, chocolate and cherry, and strawberry cheesecake.  In fact, he had just finished one such drink, a frothy pale pink potion in a swirly glass rimmed in cinnamon-baked cracker crumbs.  Niyera, on the other hand, was more a fan of the drinks with clean and bright fruit notes, flavors such as ginger and peach, honeyed lemon, and tart watermelon.  She was currently indulging in one with blood orange, grapefruit, and thyme in a tall, slender glass edged with crimson-dyed sugar crystals.  All told, they’d spent a small fortune for the woman’s considerable talents, and they were both exceedingly inebriated as a result.

 

As Niyera was finishing the last few sips of her drink, Solas was whispering the details of a scheme in her ear.  His breath was sweet with the scent of strawberries and cinnamon, and she kept finding her attention straying to his lips.  “Psht.  Are you paying attention?” he asked as he leaned heavily on the arm he had braced on the bar.  She tipped her glass back, draining the last few drops of nectar before sitting it aside on the bar.  Without answering, she grabbed his chin and pulled him down into a kiss.  Madge was snickering at the pair of them, but neither seemed to notice.  When she finally pulled back, her eyes were half-lidded, and she hummed over her words before saying, “I am now.”  Solas both laughed and scoffed, somehow, and his features fell into an exaggerated mask of seriousness as he went over the details of his plan again.  She nodded from time to time, but not too quickly, as too much movement made the room tilt in an unseemly fashion.  “Alright,” Niyera whispered as Solas finished explaining again, “Let’s do it.”  Before she stood, she smiled over at Madge, who had already cleared away their glasses and was wiping down the bar top.  “A pleasure, as always, Madge,” the Inquisitor said grandly as she stood.  Solas steadied her when she swayed, and she brushed him off in a huff, mumbling something about being perfectly capable, before she deposited a small pouch of coins on the bar.

 

Squinting over at Madge, Solas placed a finger across his lips and hissed a loud, “Shhhhhhhh, Madge.  Don’t tell anyone.”  The woman only chuckled and made an “X” over her heart with a finger.  “Cross my heart, love,” she had said, and Solas winked as he escorted the Inquisitor out of the tavern and into the night.

 

__________

 

There was no grand ball this evening in the palace, but there were  _ always _ grand dinners.  More often than not, these dinners featured tiny little desserts, fragile masterpieces of confectionery magic that tasted even better than they looked.  Which was quite the feat.  Solas’s plan was simple:  seek out the tiny little desserts, purloin a tray or two of them, and escape back to their room.  In theory, it seemed simple enough.  They’d made it in a reasonable fashion back to the palace, then managed to work their way through the vestibule without being caught up in more than a word or two of conversation.  That might have been because they so deftly talked themselves out of the interaction or that they simply hadn’t been coherent enough to interact to begin with.  If asked, they would both claim the former.  When they finally reached the double doors to the dining hall, they walked at an awkwardly hurried pace until Solas pulled back on Niyera’s arm and muttered, “Sloooow down.  You’re going to give us away.”  She distinctly frowned up at him, and he made a soothing gesture with his hand before he pulled himself straighter.  Following his lead, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.  

 

Various nobles and servants passed back and forth in front of them, casual acknowledgments were exchanged and pleasantries bantered.  However, Solas’s grey-blue eyes were ever watchful of the trays that entered the room from the side door that led off into the kitchens, and when he saw one that piqued his interest, he tugged on her arm and walked in that direction.  Nevermind that she had been complimenting the Duke of Wherever on the exceptional fashion sense he demonstrated with his choice of footwear (Leliana had said so earlier).  She waved her apologies at him and quickly trailed behind Solas.  The apostate had stopped abruptly beside a flower-topped pillar as he eyed the trays newly deposited on the sideboard, and she bumped into him.  He scolded her with a cluck of his tongue, which in reality simply seemed like he had something stuck on the roof of his mouth, and at which she snickered.  Then he chuckled, and then she laughed, and it took a moment for them to regain their composure.  Once they had their  _ serious _ faces in place once more, they nonchalantly walked, arm in arm, a few feet closer to the sideboard.  They paused just behind a drink cart, pretending to idly contemplate the selection, but she kept catching Solas staring intently at the  _ frilly _ cakes.  She pinched his arm hard enough to make him flinch, and when he frowned at her, she whispered in a not-very-quiet voice, “Quit staring!  They’ll notice us!”  

 

__________

 

On the far side of the dining hall, Josephine and Leliana were standing shoulder to shoulder, critiquing between themselves the gown Lady Suchandwhat had  _ dared _ to wear to dinner and how the Count of Thatplaceoverthere had gone back for  _ thirds _ of the main course.  That is until they noticed Solas stride into the hall with the Inquisitor close on his heels.  The women watched the pair as they none-too-covertly edged their way around the room, maintaining the barest of social graces as they tried not to stumble over each other.  It was Leliana that pointed out that they seemed focused on the dessert table, and the thought rather tickled the spymaster, so much so that it made her giggle behind a gloved hand.  Josephine frowned disapprovingly as she glanced at Leliana and urgently whispered, “Should we stop them?  We should stop them,” both asking and answering her own question.  She had only taken a step away from the wall, when the spymaster’s hand on her shoulder stopped her.  “Josie, it’s the last night,” Leliana reminded her as they watched Solas make off with one silver tray of desserts, only a fraction more surreptitiously than the Inquisitor escaped with hers.  The ambassador made a pained sound as she pinched the bridge of her nose, and Leliana only grinned, “You need to loosen up.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas and Dorian take a walk in the woods...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @zanidragon asked:
> 
> Writing prompts 1 (This is all your fault!) and/or 17 (Do you want me to leave?)? Writer's choice of characters. If you can't fit them both in one you're welcome to just pick one.
> 
> For DWC.

“ _ This _ is all  _ your _ fault,” Solas said brusquely as he trailed behind, his eyes fixed firmly on the ground or the sky or the scenery...anywhere  _ other _ than straight ahead.  He could practically hear the eye roll in Dorian’s voice when the Tevinter waved a hand dismissively and sauntered onward.  

 

“Yes, yes, of course it is,” he retorted as he craned his head to cock an eye up at the sky.  It was well after noon now, and the sun was beating down hot and bright, giving the sheen of sweat on his dark skin a golden glow.  

 

“I tried to warn you,” the apostate continued, his fair cheeks pinked by the heat and the sun, “but you just couldn’t be bothered.”  Solas swiped a hand over the crown of his head, wiping away the sweat before slinging his hand to cast off the moisture.  He sighed, the slightest bit of disgust carried in the sound, and folded his arms over his chest for a lack of having anything else to do with them.

 

Dorian stopped so suddenly in mid-step that the elf almost collided with him because he was staring at the road.  The Tevinter whirled around on his booted heel and glowered at Solas, “How was  _ I _ supposed to know it was a spirit of chicanery?”  The elf’s eyes immediately snapped up to Dorian’s.  “It  _ looked _ like a harmless, though roguishly handsome, farmhand to me,” he said, folding his arms across his bare chest.

 

“Because I  _ tried _ to  _ tell _ you!” Solas shot back, his arms still folded over his own bare chest.  “And, that isn’t at all what it looked like.”  

 

“Well, what did it look like to  _ you _ , then?” the Tevinter snapped.

 

“That’s irrelevant,” the elf said petulantly as he glanced away. 

 

And, there they stood, the Tevinter and the Apostate, glaring at each other in the middle of the road, stark naked except for their boots.

 

Dorian scoffed loudly and scrubbed a hand through his hair, saying, “Well, this is getting us nowhere.”

 

__________

 

Earlier in the day, they’d been in the countryside just outside of Redcliffe, gathering blood lotus along the river.  It had been frightfully hot, muggy, and humid -- rather abysmal all the way around.  So, when they stopped to take lunch, they did so by the lake.  After all, what harm was there in a dip to cool themselves off?  Just as Solas had hoped, the water had been quite chilly, especially in the parts sheltered by tree cover.  He was just beginning to get comfortable when the breaking of a twig in the tree line caught his attention.  He stood, wading back into waist-deep water, fingers perched on the edge of a spell.  Dorian only responded when he saw the elf throw up a ward.

 

“Is that really necessary?  It’s likely a chipmunk or a rabbit or some other small furry beast,” he had said, leaning back to dunk his hair into the water.  

 

“We can’t know that, Dorian,” the elf had said pointedly, and his companion made an irritable noise as he began to trudge back toward the bank.  Just then, a figure stepped from the tree line.  To Solas, it looked like an elven woman, familiar but not, as if the memory of her had been made indistinct and fuzzy by time.

 

“Oh,” she had said, blushing appropriately when confronted with two nude strangers, “I didn’t realize anyone else was here.”  It was curious, he couldn’t quite tell what color her hair was.  While he was mulling the oddity of that revelation, Dorian had immediately become a gracious host, as if the lake were his personal bathing pool.

 

“That needn’t be a problem, friend,” the man had said, motioning to the expanse of the lake, “there’s more than enough room.”  The woman had smiled at Dorian, but the expression faltered a bit when she glanced at Solas.  Her voice pulled him out of his murky thoughts.

 

“Do you want me to leave?” she asked, and when the elf passed a dubious glance at Dorian, the man made a very compelling case against that possibility with a few nods and his eyebrows alone.

 

“No, that will not be necessary,” Solas finally answered, then retreated into deeper water and drifted toward Dorian.  

 

“I am uncertain what it is exactly, but there is something amiss here,” he’d whispered to his companion, and the darker man turned a doubtful glance his way.

 

“You worry entirely too much, Solas.  It seems innocent enough to me,” he said, sending a small splash of water in the elf’s direction.  “Perhaps if you’d spend more time living in the world you so love to study, such serendipitous meetings wouldn’t seem so suspect,” Dorian finished, clapping Solas on the shoulder before wading away.

 

Solas’s mouth twisted up, one brow cocked high, as he watched his now  _ two _ companions enjoy the refreshing swim.  There was just something about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.  On the surface, she looked and felt familiar, but when he tried to focus on any one feature -- her eyes or hair or skin -- everything became fuzzy.  

 

It was after that thought when he began to lose track of time.  From one moment to the next, it seemed as if he had just woken out of a daydream.  That listless, floaty feeling was ever present.  He became cognizant of the repetitious nature of his thoughts, how they seemed to loop endlessly, and he began to actively fight against it.  It was only then that he noticed Dorian was floating on his back, gazing lazily up at the sky with an uncharacteristically vacant expression on his face.  Not unconscious, just not there.  Solas splashed water in his face to try to force himself into wakefulness and began to wade toward the bank.  

 

“Tut tut,” he heard the woman’s voice say, and he found her on the edge of the bank.  It looked like she was grinding a handful of blood lotus blossoms between her palms.  He thought to warn her that releasing the essence of the petals was dangerous in such volume.  It could cause hallucinations.  

 

“You are a difficult one, Elvhen,” she said, her tone light, playful as a flare of fire sprang to life in her palm, sundering the petals to ash.  “You’re going to require something a little extra,” she explained, puffing out her cheeks before blowing the petal ash in his direction.  As if her breath itself had a mind of its own, it swirled around the ashes and drew them along in a languid spiral toward him.  He tried not to breathe, but when the soot tickled his nose, he sucked in a large, involuntary breath before he sneezed.  The effects were immediate.  

 

Distantly, he heard shuffling, but he was far too distracted by the visions to be concerned with the sound.  Like Dorian, he simply lay back, drifting on the surface of the water.

 

When at last the effects of her spell and the blood lotus wore off, Dorian and Solas had emerged from the lake to find that all of their belongings -- ALL OF THEM -- except for their boots were gone.

 

__________

 

“We really have no choice but to keep walking,” Solas eventually said, his tone short and annoyed, as he strode past Dorian.  He’d lost so much more than his clothes.  He’d had notes in his bag, potions, and crystals.  Even his  _ staff _ was gone.  He muttered to himself as he stalked along the road, occasionally rolling his shoulders back and forth in an attempt to ease out the tension.

 

Dorian had been strangely quiet for quite a while when he suddenly spoke up, “You know, Solas,” and there was a pause.  It was long and thoughtful, so much so that the elf glanced back over his shoulder at the Tevinter.  

 

“I never realized you had such muscular shoulders,” Dorian finished, and Solas’s lips pressed into a thin line as his eyes turned a patience-beseeching glance to the sky.  

 

“And, from this angle, your as-,” Dorian started, but was cut off when Solas snapped a hand in the air in an impatient gesture.  

 

“No.  Just...no,” Solas said firmly.

 

“But, I only mea-” the Tevinter began again, and Solas’s opposite hand flung out in a similar gesture.

 

“Stop.”

 

“But, Solas…”

 

“Shut up, Dorian.”

 

Solas never turned around to see, but he was fairly certain Dorian smirked the whole way back to the inn.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was a prompt from @solverne: 
> 
> A kiss because I have literally been watching you all night and can't take anymore. ;D 
> 
> I did one part, aaaaand, then I had to do a second. I'll put a line break between the two.
> 
> NSFW forest sex and choke-play. Be warned.

From across the glade, Solas watched her.  Had watched her all night.  It was the mild eve following Summerday, and she'd convinced him to accompany her to a celebration hosted by a Dalish clan passing through the Emerald Graves.  A massive central bonfire burned at the heart of the clearing, while several smaller lit the area nearer the tree line.   Honeyed ciders and spiced wines flowed freely, and voices were raised in laughter and singing.  

 

But, not his.  He'd broken bread with the clan, made conversation with the elders, and accompanied Niyera as she entertained the young ones with playful displays of magic.  He was wary, however, of relaxing in the clan’s company.  Alcohol had a way of loosening his tongue, he knew, and this would be an unwise time and place to say too much.  So, he lingered at the edge of the glade, one of but a few stragglers that seemed uninterested in the festivities.  She'd even asked him to dance when the revels began, but he had declined in the interest of remaining distant from the others.  The disappointment in her eyes had been obvious, but she said nothing and her downtrodden expression had not been enough to change his mind.  

 

Though now as he watched her weave across the glade, arm in arm with the other revelers, he regretted his decision.   Every time she passed between him and a bonfire, the lines of her body were silhouetted by the backdrop of flames.  The fiery light touched all of her curves, the thin linen of her dress easily penetrated to reveal the forms beneath.  The sight stole his breath, making his heart thud against his ribs and his body respond in ways that were difficult to conceal.  He would be loathe to admit it, but he was jealous.  Of every hand that touched her.  Every eye that traced the lines illuminated by the fire.  Of those that could dance with her amid the flames and never worry that they might burn her.  

 

He'd given up trying to drown the irrational line of thoughts in his head.  There wasn't enough cider for that.  He knew she had eyes only for him, but she was so beautiful like this.  The mantle of Inquisitor abandoned for an evening, leaving her light on her feet, with a lilt in her voice and a perpetual smile on her lips that he was becoming desperate to taste.   So, when the trail of dancing passed him again, he inserted himself into the line beside her.  There was hardly a beat missed in the dance, and the warmth in her eyes when she laughed joyously curled a tempting heat in his gut.  Her fingers threaded effortlessly into his, their arms hooked at the elbow as they traversed the wending path between the fires.   

 

On the second pass that drew them nearest the glade’s edge, he spun her out of the line and into his arms, and the steps of his dance found them quickly concealed within the shadows of the trees.  He gave her no time to protest as he backed her up against a towering maple and bowed his head to capture her lips.  There was nothing tame in the way he kissed her; it was raw lust in the hands that ghosted up her neck to sink into her hair.  In the tongue that pressed insistently against her lips, then slipped past with the utterance of her moan.  He drank the sound from her mouth like a man parched in the desert partakes of an oasis:  desperate, reverent, and greedy. 

 

Even as she clutched at his tunic, he could feel the need in his kiss answered by her body.  She arched against him, her lips a scalding brand on his as she began to match his fervor.   Her breasts were unbound, peaks stiff and straining against the linen that covered them, and she temptingly pressed against him.  A thigh had found its way between hers, and she ground against it, her ever searching fingers seeking the skin of his back.  A light rake of her nails set him to shuddering, and he breathlessly tore his mouth from hers to taste her neck.  

  
When he'd made his way to her ear, tongue tip hot on the outer shell, he gave a roughly whispered confession to her, “Ma lath, the fires have kissed your every curve tonight, and the sight burns within me.”  His lips fell to the hollow of her throat, and he lapped at the tremble her moan trailed along her skin.  “I need to taste you, to reclaim you...here...now…I  _ beg _ you.”  Before she could speak, his mouth sought hers again, though her answer was clear when she curled a leg behind his thigh.  The growl that crawled from his chest and into her preceded by only moments his hands hooking behind her thighs to hoist her legs about his hips.  Like a ravenous wolf with a fresh catch, he carried her deeper into the forest to devour his prey.  

* * *

 

The warmth and light of the bonfires were long left behind them, and Solas had tossed a small orb of fire into the air to illuminate the path.  Meanwhile, her face was tucked into the hollow of his shoulder, and she mapped a trail to his earlobe, lips and tongue and teeth working in concert.  The rhythm of her hot breath on his skin kept time with the pace of his heart, wild and quick with hunger.  He'd had a mind to return to camp with her, but he kept getting sidetracked.   Largely with the strength of her legs, she held herself upright.  But, when she propped her elbows on his shoulders and used that leverage and her grip on his waist to slide her body, her heat, against him, his resolve was washed away with the tide.  His eyes began searching; any solid surface would do.   On his skin, he felt the vibration of her voice, a loud moan as she sunk her teeth into him.  Not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough to bruise.  The sensation brought a growl to his throat and an abrupt end to his search.  

Against the nearest tree, he pinned her, leaning into her to hold her weight with his body as he tore open the buttoned bodice of her dress and gathered her breasts in his hands.  His head dipped to taste her flesh, lips scorching the skin from her collarbone to the rise of her bosom.  He marked one lush swell, teeth biting and scraping before his mouth engulfed a peak.  His tongue rolled the pebbled bud over and over, and when she tilted her head back against the tree, her voice broke on her pleasure.   In earnest, he sucked and kneaded and occupied a hand with massaging the other breast.  She was nothing but one unending moan by the time he surfaced to gaze at her.  The small orb of flame languidly bobbed around them, and the ever-shifting shadows it cast painted her snowy hair in streaks of gold and smoke and strew sparks across her viridian eyes.  When she deigned to open them, that is.  They lingered closed under the ministrations of his hands, his lithe, strong fingers stroking the stiff peaks of her breasts.

Barely contained desire swept off of him in waves, palpable, as he rolled his hips into her to summon her attention.  The motion pulled her head down, her eyes falling on his.  He found her lips resting parted slightly on quick breaths, and the intensity in her gaze was tempered with the lightest touch of surprise.  “Solas,” she hushed out, the name all at once a question, a prayer, a request, and unconsciously, her tongue brushed her lower lip.  He couldn't pull his eyes from the sight of it, and he followed it first with the wide pad of his thumb, then his tongue.  He drug the tip across the plump flesh, placing suckling kisses on each corner of her mouth before he took her chin firmly in hand and swept past her lips.  He was a man possessed; in some measure, it might have been the excesses of wine but only in so much as it amplified what was already there.  He loved her, yes, but he also craved her in the same way that his lungs lusted for air.  He'd known from their first kiss this would be dangerous, but he could not have conceived that she would have this effect on him. 

With his tongue, he explored the depths of her voracity, and he found that she left nothing wanting.  She returned his kiss just as feverishly, lacing her fingers behind his neck to encourage him.  His hand fell from her chin rest just beneath, the span between his thumb and forefinger embracing her throat as he forced her head up with light pressure on her jaw.   The muted gasp that slipped from her lips was choked as he put the faintest pressure on the sides of her neck.  “Have I ever told you what you taste like?” he queried, his voice so deep that it ground out like gravel.   The hands that gripped his shoulders flexed, and she breathlessly answered, “No, ma lath,” as she writhed against him.  He leaned in, nose brushing across her chest as his lungs swelled with the scent of her.  “Honey,” he began as he laved his tongue from the valley of her breasts to the rise of her collarbone.   “Wildflower honey,” he specifically confessed to her skin as his teeth scraped over the rise of the bone.  The shuddering mewl that she uttered brushed across his palm as it exited her throat.  “Blackberries,” he continued, nibbling at her neck as his free hand trailed beneath her bottom, under her skirt, fingers twisting in the hip seam of her smalls until it popped.  

His hand fell to the laces on his leggings, and when he tilted a glance up to her, he found her looking down her nose at him, held poised by his hand on her throat.   Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth, muffling the sharp  _ mmm _ she murmured when she felt her smalls rip.   In as much as she could, she was rocking her hips against him in anticipation, and he teased his thumb along the crook of her leg.  “Oh,” he continued once more, nuzzling against her neck as he sought her core and pressed his thumb inside.  A sound that was half breath and half moan filled her throat, and she tightened her legs to pull herself onto his hand.  In and out, he stroked, and when he pulled his hand away, his thumb was coated in her arousal, and she protested at his absence, squirming and straining to lower her chin.  She succeeded only in further constricting her breath against his grip.  All but panting, she cut her eyes down at him as he said, “There's one more thing,” as his hand lifted.  He swiped his thumb along her upper lip, then the lower before pressing into her mouth.  “Sweet cream,” he finished, voice as smooth as satin and dark as chocolate, and her eyes fluttered back before closing as she sucked her nectar from his skin.  A deep rumbling echoed in his chest as he observed her, and one of her hands left his shoulder to hold his wrist as she pulled long and deep on his thumb. 

His nail caught on her lower lip when he tugged his thumb from her mouth, and he reached between them to align himself with her opening.  In one smooth slide, he hilted himself between her thighs, and the sensation crawled roughly up his spine.  Beneath her ear, his fingers stroked the skin almost tenderly as she moaned, and then he began to thrust.  The tone of her voice changed in pitch, lowering until it was little more than grunting out every breath as he plunged into her.  He buried his face in her chest, scrubbing against her breasts before his gluttony drove his mouth higher.  Fevered lips feasted on the skin at the base of her throat before his tongue tasted the length of her neck to the tip of her lifted chin.  He couldn't help but admire the enticing way her lips hugged every ardent sound they uttered, how her skin flushed brightly with her pique, the submission that allowed her to enjoy the command of his grip and the ferocity of his pace. 

Praises fell from her lips like water between the lascivious sounds that stole his breath and renewed his vigor.  Around him, he felt her grow tight on his length, and he loosened his grip enough to slide down her neck, where his fingers rested at the base.  Her chin fell, and they locked eyes.  From the center of her body, she shuddered on him, against him, her lips frozen on the cusp of rapture as she came apart beneath him.  She invoked his name as she bucked erratically, and he forged through her peak with stoic concentration.  He wasn't nearly done with her yet.   Wrapping both arms beneath her thighs, he leaned away from the tree and turned.  She was panting and weak when he withdrew and sat her on her feet, but she quickly busied herself with stripping off her dress as he removed and discarded his tunic.  

Latching onto the hips of his leggings, she sank to her knees, tugging them as she went, and when she found herself at his feet, she couldn't resist the urge to taste him.  Her mouth sank onto his cock, and a startled groan clawed from his chest as his knees wobbled for just a moment.  His head fell back, and he gripped a handful of her hair, burying himself in her throat once, twice, three times before he snatched her away.  A hand fell to her shoulder and pushed as he dropped to his knees, and when she caught herself on her hands, he dug his fingers into her hips and yanked her forcibly to him.  She squealed in shock, but the sound bottomed out into a throaty moan as he reclaimed her from behind.  A hand between her shoulders forced her chest flush to the ground as his grip on her hip pulled her higher against him.  And there, he held her as took her, the slap of their bodies together dampened by the dense tree-cover, trapping the sound even as it tossed it back at them.  

Every breath left him as a guttural growl as he plunged in and out of her, delighting in the way the impact made her flesh ripple and her breasts sway. Beneath the sound of their bodies meeting, he heard her voice, but only barely as her mouth was clamped on her forearm to muffle her pleasured cries.  From her back, his hand fed into her hair and coiled.  A sharp tug brought her head up, and a groaning whine tumbled from her lips.  Hooking an arm beneath her stomach, he pulled her up, back pressed against his chest as he rolled his hips continuously up and into her.  He drew the one her hair back over her shoulder so that he could rest his lips against her ear, then splayed his hands across her belly, bending her slightly to mold her body to his.  “I want to hear you,” he crooned into her ear as a hand ghosted along her skin to cup her breast from beneath.  Between his thumb and forefinger, he worked the rosy bud, and her response was a hitching breath that caught in her throat before it rushed out in a frantic groan.  “S-solas,” she haltingly gasped as the molten fist clenched in her body unfurled and rushed to where their bodies met.  Threading her fingers into his, she drug his hand from her stomach to her throat, where she folded his fingers in a tight grip.  

The boldness of the gesture stirred him deeply, and it sent spears of ravening heat through his body to his face and down into the pit of his stomach.  In her ear, his voice was an incoherent groan as he clutched at her slender throat, dragging the tip of her ear through his teeth when he felt her breath catch beneath his fingers.  Her body was pliable yet somehow taut with urgency as she tipped her head back to rest on his shoulder and bucked against the lift of his hips.  Choked screams of fervor scraped past her lips, and he reveled in the feel of them struggling past his grip.  Beneath his hand, held flush against his chest, he felt her muscles go rigid as her body clenched down on him.  Sliding his hand from her chest to her hip, he drove into her mercilessly, pounding as she dissolved around him again.  Beneath his hand, her throat worked to give voice to her cries, but her lips perched open on only the broken sounds of her gasps, breaths drawn with agonizing effort as yet another peak broke upon her.  

The intensity of the sensations of her body on his lured him to the edge, and resistance was no longer possible.  Rooted deep in his body, the knot of tension seized, abrupt and fierce, and he buried his face in her hair as she reached back to cradle the back of his head in her palm.  His thrusts slowed to deep strokes that sank smoothly in before snapping out again, and he maintained that rhythm until his voice broke on a roar as he was overtaken by his climax.  Every jerk of his hips pulled another moan from him, and he found that his grip on her throat had faltered.  He clung now to her with both arms, her breathless cries mingled with his as his spend was buried inside her with each rocking of his hips.  Unable to release her, he held her as if she were his only anchor to the world and rode out the aftershocks of his release still sheathed in her heat, grinding out every last pulse.  When their bodies stilled, he could feel her trembling beneath his hands as surely as he could feel the unsteadiness in his own legs.  Her hair clung in strands to his sweat-dampened brow, and he shifted to glide his lips along the line of her shoulder, pausing only when he’d settled his mouth beneath her ear.

“Ar lath ma, vhenan,” he breathed as his eyes slipped closed, and she answered simply by taking one of his hands in both of hers and pressing her lips to each knuckle before nuzzling her cheek into his palm.  Warm and sated, he took a trembling breath that left him as a sigh of contentment the likes of which he never thought to find.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For DWC 31. “You weren’t supposed to laugh!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my Inquisitor, Caitlin Trevelyan, and Cullen.
> 
>  
> 
> In some Avvar stuff.
> 
>  
> 
> That turned into smut. Well, almost smut.
> 
>  
> 
> Sry, not sry.
> 
>  
> 
> NSFW.

 

 

Her elbows were buried deep in the mounds of pillows scattered at the head of the bed as she reclined lazily back, legs stretched out and crossed in front of her.  The night fell in through the balcony doors, and each glass pane was glazed with the reflections of candle flames.  A faint hint of smoke wafted in the air along with sandalwood and a breath of wild rose.  She’d been waiting, ever so patiently, but now that things had gotten quiet, she couldn’t help herself.  

 

“Cullen?  What are you  _ doing _ in there?” she called out, tilting her head toward the small room just to the side of the bed.  A haze of red darkened the nape of her neck, a few strands fallen from the pile mounded at the crown of her head, and her violet eyes settled on the door.  From behind the barrier, she heard a hollow *thunk*, as if something had hit the side of the metal tub, then a gruff string of swearing.  Her lips were bent into a smug smile when he finally answered.

 

“Exactly what you  _ asked _ me to do, Cait,” he said, with some mixture of irritation and sheepishness rife in the sound of the words.  She rested her cheek on her bare shoulder as she continued to gaze at the door, and between her fingers, she rolled the end of one of the satin laces on the bodice of her nightgown.  She had been just about to ask if he had  _ any _ intention of coming out before dawn when the door creaked open.  

 

“Are you certain this is necessary?” he asked, still hidden from her view within the small room.  Her eyes twirled upward as she spoke.  “Necessary?  No.  Do I still  _ want _ it?  Yes.”  There was a noise that she could only describe as grunted scoff, another “ _ Maker’s breath _ ,” and then a deep sigh before she heard movement.  It was a soft sound, a rustle, fur over leather, leather over skin, and the hush of bare feet on the floor.  Avoiding her gaze at all costs, Cullen made his way unhurriedly from the washroom, moving toward the end of the bed.  

 

Her eyes followed him, trailing from his knees upward.  Bands of heavy clay-based paint in a chalky white hue cut diagonally over his shins, then his thighs, which were bare but for the fringe of fur that edged the leather loincloth draped from his hips to settle between his knees.  The paint was accented with smudged streaks of black, the darkened hue giving contour to the already well-defined muscles of his legs.  A gathered belt of suede sat just beneath his waist, dipping enough to reveal the vee of his lower body, which was bisected by an auburn trail of curls that disappeared beneath the loincloth.  Above, streaks of the white clay were slashed across his chest in broad, uneven strokes, with the muscles beneath similarly defined as were those of his legs.  

 

His amber gaze never rose to her as he turned the corner at the end of the bed to stand at the foot.   A deep breath made his chest swell, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other before tilting only his eyes to stare at her over his lowered chin and from beneath his furrowed brow.  The nature of the stare was striking and only intensified by the sooty black pigment that ringed his eyes and flared out across his temples to his hairline.  White caked his forehead and smeared his upper cheeks, and several more streaks of the paste could be found running in coils from his biceps to his forearms.

 

“Happy now?” he asked with a subtle edge in his voice, hands splaying out to either side of his hips in display.  Unconsciously, she licked her lips as her head dipped to one side, eyes roaming freely over the figure her lover cut in the warmth of the candlelight.  When she’d told Cullen that she wanted him to be an Avvar for her, he’d been reluctant to oblige.  Her Commander, he wasn’t much for activities that he found could be potentially humiliating.  Though now, she couldn’t imagine what he’d possibly been worried about.  Resettling her weight onto a single elbow, she raised the other arm, tapping her fingertips across her lips as she regarded him.  

 

She was quite happy, in fact, and she couldn’t dampen the broad smile that formed beneath her fingers.  Without question, Cullen was a beautiful specimen of a man; he was a composition of lines formed by practice and training, a myriad victories and losses spelled out on his skin in the way it rippled over his muscles and was scored by pale scars.  He twisted a brow higher when he noticed her smile  _ and _ her lack of comment, and something darker stole over his eyes.  The weight of his stare prickled her skin, raising the downy hairs on the back of her neck and across her stomach.  Before she could help herself, she huffed out an incredulous chuckle that broke into a spurt of laughter.

 

His face creased with his glowering, and the clay paint on his brow cracked just a bit as his skin bunched.  He sounded wounded when he said, “You weren’t supposed to laugh.”  When he made as if to walk away, she sat up from her elbows quickly, her mirth dying in favor of the desirous smile that took its place on her lips.  “No, please!  Wait, Cullen,” she said, and he paused, turning back to stare at her, his golden eyes much more piercing staring through the black eye paint he wore.  “I wasn’t laughing  _ at _ you.  It’s just...I...Oh, this is so much more than I could have hoped for,” she offered, the last of her words dwindling into a throaty husk of sound as her eyes roved over his form once more.

 

The skin between his eyes knitted, and his head dropped ever so slightly to leave him looking up at her from beneath his brow.  “Is that so?”  Her  _ mmhm _ was a breathy murmur from behind her lips as she leaned back onto her elbows again, one hand idly coasting over the sheer silk that covered her torso.  The gauzy fabric snagged on her fingertips and drew it upward to reveal the slope of her waistline and the softness of her stomach.  Growing bolder, Cullen braced a knee on the bench at the end of the bed as he leaned over, planting his hands to either side of her legs.  “You like this, then?”  The action rolled his shoulders and bunched the muscles of his back, stretching his neck in a thick, corded line as he started down the length of her body at her.  So very pleased with herself for having this idea, and even more pleased with how devastatingly formidable he looked, she squirmed into the mattress as she pulled her bottom lip in between her teeth.

 

“Mmhm,” she answered again, her gaze none-too-shyly trailing down his chest to the line of curls that dipped lower.  With a snarl, Cullen’s hands snapped down on her legs just beneath the knees, his grip like iron as he drug her forcefully to him.  A surprised sound escaped her at the abruptness of his movements, and before she could settle, his hands jumped to her hips and pulled her the rest of the way to him.  His first pull had tugged her nightgown up her torso, but the last bunched it beneath the swell of her breasts.  He had her legs parted to either side of his bent knee, and his fingers were biting into her hips hard enough to leave small bruises.  Her breath stirred her chest in a quick rise and fall as she met the heat in Cullen’s eyes with her own.  Nudging his knee roughly into the crevice between her legs, he stretched over her body to pull the pin holding her hair free.  It made a tinny sound when it skipped across the floor as he dropped it, then shook out her long, red hair messily with a rough hand.  

 

She could only watch him as he seemed to slip beneath the savagery of the persona he’d created, and she more than once felt her breath catch in her throat.  His touch was rough when he handled her, when he pressed his knee into her, and when curled his fist into the mass of hair he’d just uncoiled.   He seemed to revel in the widening of her violet eyes as he tightened his grip on her hair, and a somewhat feral grin split his lips.  Lowering his head until his mouth hovered a hair’s breath above hers, he commanded in a dusky whisper, “Then show me just how much.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the prompt: Kiss me everywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Solas and nameless Lavellan

She opened the door from the bath, and a pale plume of fragranced steam wafted out and quickly dissipated.  The room was dim, the night pouring in through the balcony doors, untainted as the new moon hid from the darkness.  A fire burned in the hearth, and the flames sent shadows dancing across the far wall as she took a step further.  “Solas?” she called as she knotted the belt of her robe loosely.  The looming outline of the four poster bed fell about her, silhouetted by the fire, and left her with little sense of anything beyond the fire’s light.  Her feet turned toward the fireplace, and she was nearly at the foot of the bed when she detected movement out of the corner of her eye.  

 

A golden swirl of magefire sprang to life in Solas’s palm, and she let out a startled squeal as her body snapped around to face him.  “Creators!  Why are you sitting in the dark?”  A swish of his fingers passed the flame to the nearby oil lamp, and the flickering light made sharp lines of his features.  A vague smile hung on his lips, and his hands rested in his lap, fingers threaded.  He was bare to the waist and had one leg lazily crooked and resting on her desktop.  “Waiting patiently on you,” he replied, unmoving and maintaining his enigmatic expression.   The small fright had quickened her heartbeat and brought a warm flush to her cheeks.

 

She chuckled quietly as she padded over to him, her fingers walking as light as whispers up his leather-clad calf as she stood between his legs.  “Am I late for an appointment?  I hadn't realized I had a  _ firm  _ engagement this evening,” she murmured as her hand slipped up his thigh to settle between his legs.  His eyes never strayed from hers, his smile never wavered, and he languished under her touch as if the attention was something he was owed as if in tribute.  “I noticed you were enjoying quite an animated conversation with Cassandra this afternoon…over that piece of tripe she and Varric call literature,” he commented, seemingly off-hand as his posture and tone of voice remained unchanging.  

 

Her touch faltered, but quickly recovered as she massaged the heel of her hand against his growing arousal, and her fingers tickled at the skin above his beltline.  “It was a different one, actually.  Varric started another romance serial, I think, purely so he’d have something to hold over her head.”  Solas chuckled, a throaty rumble of a sound, then said, “Need I worry that he will have it to hold over your head as well?  You seemed very enthralled.”  Her lips parted on silence, and her eyes widened as if the suggestion was abhorrent.  It took her a few moments to find her voice, then she professed, “Of course not, vhenan.  Nothing on a page could compare to what you offer.”  She held his gaze, though a curl of apprehension tightened in the pit of her stomach.  Had she known he was watching, she would have never have glanced at it.  A thin brow arched over a grey-blue eye as he murmured a  _ Mmhm _ under his breath.

 

As quick as lightning, he caught her hand and bent it gently back to remove her touch.  Uncertain of her misstep, her eyes darted up to his as he was lowering his propped leg from the desktop.  “Should we test that?” he asked as he placed her hand by her side and stood, casually brushing his body against hers as he rose.  The draw of his body on hers sent a tremor through her and summoned a quickening of her breath.  She adopted a repentant posture, eyes averted and head bowed, as she shook her head.  “No?” he mused as he traced the curve of her cheek to her jaw and thumbed her bottom lip for a moment before pressing the digit into her mouth.  Readily, she accepted the intrusion, and her lids fell over her eyes as she laved her tongue across his skin.  The sound that escaped her wasn’t one she could stifle as her mind had drifted to what she would rather have in her mouth.  “I think we should.  I would like for you to tell me what it was that held your attention so,” he said, the warm slip of her tongue cradling his thumb as she sucked firmly.

 

Tugging his thumb from her mouth, he roughed the tip over her lips, leaving them puckered and moist.  Pink and hungry, her tongue darted out to chase his thumb, but she was soon left bereft, her mouth chilled by her quick draw of breath.  “I want to know if there is something more I can do to please you.”  He glanced downward then, and the hand that had been on her lips sank to trace the deep ‘v’ neck of her robe through the valley between her breasts.  His touch ignited a spark at the base of her skull that ran along her spine to her toes.  “I-,” she began, but halted as he slipped his hands under the collar of her robe then over her shoulders, easing the fabric down her arms.  It hung limply from her bent elbows, barely clinging to the swell of her breasts.  

 

“Hm?” he encouraged, coasting a palm over one mound, then the other, with the slick slide of the satin creating the most delicious friction.   Her lips fell open in a barely audible moan as she arched her back to press into his touch.  A tendril of warmth wriggled through her chest and into her stomach.  “Yes...as you like,” she managed to breathe out, her desire to feel his skin on hers stealing the volume of her voice.  The rolling of her shoulders hastened the fall of her robe, and it slid rest of the way down her arms.  She freed herself from the fabric, and the satin hung from the flare of her hips.  Solas wasted no time occupying his hands with her newly revealed flesh, alternately massaging and circling the peaks of her breasts.  “I should very much like,” he confessed before taking her hand and leading her to the end of the bed.

 

With his hands on her shoulders, he turned her to face the bed and nudged her closer with the pressure of his body at her back.  When her knees grazed the coverlet, he stopped her by settling his grip on her waist.  “Now,” he said against her ear as his touch ghosted over her ribs and up, lifting her arms to guide her hands to the tall posts of the bed.  His fingers closed around hers, fixing her grip in place, “I want you to hold there and not let go.  Understand?”  She tilted her chin over her shoulder, barely catching sight of him in the corner of her eye before she said, “Yes.”  The warmth of his bare chest against her back made her stiffen slightly, then immediately uncoil as he brushed his mouth along the slope of her ear.  Her eyes fluttered.

 

“Face forward, ma vhenan” he paused as he drug his hands over her stomach to cradle the weight of her breasts from beneath.  He only spoke again when she had obeyed, his breath a warm tickle in her ear.  “Now, tell me.  What was so interesting in that drabble?” he commanded gently, resting his chin on her shoulder as he tweaked the rosy buds between his fingers.  There was a hum behind her lips as she shifted under his hands, then, “There was, ah-,” as her back arched into his hands.  “There were two...two chapters she showed me,” she admitted, resisting the urge to glance back at him.  “I see.  Let us start at the beginning, then,” he said, pinching and pulling roughly at her breasts.  “How did it start?”  The plying of his hands made her toes curl, each twist of his fingers bringing a stinging heat to her skin.  “She asked her lover to kiss her,” she all but blurted out, as she flexed her grip on the bed posts.  A sound of acknowledgement from Solas caressed her ear, and his hands shifted to flatten against her taut stomach.

 

“Where?” he inquired, pressing the blunt tips of his fingers into her skin as they inched their way to her waist.  Her stomach hollowed when she sucked in a breath, and she ground her backside against him.  Bruisingly, he clutched at her waist and drug his teeth across her bare shoulder, “None of that.  Where did she asked to be kissed?”  Her exhale was a hiss between clenched teeth, and she tensed with the effort not to move.  “Everywhere,” she said in a hush, her voice scarcely a whisper.  Easing his grip, Solas traced her waistline, pausing on the knot in the sash of her robe to loosen it.  The cool slip of the satin slid over her hips and thighs before he caught it and tossed the garment aside.

 

The nudge of his knee against the back of her thighs opened her legs, and the tap of his foot between hers spread them.  Though a fire crackled mere steps away, a chill prickled over her bared skin, chasing goosebumps long her arms.  She shivered, though it was more than the cold; the warmth in her chest had sunk, suffusing her belly and teasing lower as she stood splayed before him.  Though she never relished the idea of displeasing him, she adored the penance he demanded.  His head lowered, bringing his mouth to the skin of her shoulder, where he placed a lingering kiss to sooth the skin he’d earlier punished.

 

“You listen so well, vhenan.  So beautifully,” he praised, hands riding the slope of her hips and around to cup her buttocks firmly.  His words brought a blush to her skin, a warmth she could feel in the tips of her ears and across her chest.  “' _ Ma serannas _ ,” was her response, and his voice was a warm chuckle in her ear when he spoke, “‘ _ Ma neral _ .  But, unless I ask, you will speak no further.”  Her lips parted as if to protest, but the sound was clipped into little more than a whine when she fixed her mouth closed.  “Of course,” he began as he went to a knee behind her, his touch outlining the contours of her body along the way.  “If you feel the need to moan, you may certainly do that,” was his concession as he inched a hand up her inner thigh as he placed a tender kiss on her hip.  

 

“I am not completely without mercy, after all,” he breathed on her skin as he gripped her thigh and began the mapping of her body with his lips.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas tries to find another way to restore his power, and Lavellan gets caught between him and his enemies. It doesn't end well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a Tumblr prompt from @savvylittleminx: Devastating prompt? *cracks knuckles* Ok, you asked for it: Lavellan being made tranquil by Solas' enemies...right in front of him and he can do nothing to stop it. Nor can he reverse it.
> 
> I'm not really happy with how it came out. Too long, too dry, just not enough...umph or something. Yay writer's block.
> 
> Tagged for violence, blood, guts, hurt, angst.

The smoke from the fire drifted up and through the crevice in the cave ceiling that created a natural chimney, and while cramped, his little nook of stone was warm and bright.  It was the opposite of he himself.   Solas sat on his unbound bedroll, back propped against a conveniently placed boulder as he considered the cube held between his hands.  It was not unlike his orb had been:  similar in size, face laden with elaborate carvings of whorls and eddies.  Likewise, it was lighter than it would appear, having a facade of dark stone while possessing only half the weight as would seem appropriate.  Between his index fingertips, he spun the cube, holding it by opposite corners as he pushed it with his thumbs.  His eyes traced the grooves that bit into its surface, his sight as lost in the pattern as his mind was in the maze of his thoughts.  Once, his path had seemed so straightforward, so clear.  He woke to a world warped by his own ambition, and he had pledged to set it right.  But that was before...everything changed.

 

Even then, the plan was simple:  reclaim what he had lost, what was stolen.  But, that too, turned out to be a much more complex proposition.  While in the end, Mythal’s power had helped, he was still yet to reclaim his full strength, and with his orb destroyed, there was no longer a shortcut to accomplishing that goal.  It had taken weeks of study, traveling, searching through ancient texts, his memories, and the Fade before he’d stumbled upon a possible solution.  And even then, he was hesitant about exploiting it.  Mythal was not the only among the Evanuris to leave faithful behind, those that slumbered in forgotten shrines and temples, mired in sleep that had lasted for thousands of years.  Granted, there were few that could claim such, but there _were_ others.  The easiest to find had been a decrepit shrine dedicated to Daern’thal, the Nightmare of the Forgotten Ones.  The thought of Daern’thal was enough to send shards of ice through his blood, and Solas was not easily shaken.  

 

All the same, desperate times called for desperate measures, he had thought.  Though it would not hold the full measure of Daern’thal’s power, it would hold something, and something was better than nothing.  In theory.  Claiming the artifact had been easy enough, not nearly as challenging as he had imagined.  The wards long ago laid were decayed and avoidable, so it was not until he had actually breached the sanctuary and taken the cube in hand that any Sentinels awoke.  Some did not stir at all, and those that did were dispatched succinctly.  That was over a week ago, and he had yet to open the cube.  Trepidation stayed his hand.  It was a risk.  To him.  To the world.  He couldn’t be certain what it was that would be unleashed, and all things considered, the last elven artifact to be utilized thusly had not exactly made life easier.  For anyone.

 

The skin between his brows scrunched as his narrowed grey-blue eyes etched over the artifact, memorizing the lines as if he would be able to divine the future if he studied them long enough.  He knew that the result of utilizing the cube’s power was not something that could be predicted.  Would the consequences be worth the reward?  He thought about consequences more now than he ever had before he’d reawoken to this new world.  This place that was a mockery of all he had tried to make of it.  Of all he’d wanted it to be.  To see good intentions go so impossibly wrong…  His chest heaved with the depth of his sigh, and he balanced the artifact on his thigh as he lifted a hand to his brow.  No matter how he rubbed, it was impossible to massage away the tension, the uncertainty, the regret.  There was _so_ much he regretted.  In his waking moments, his regrets pressed upon him at every turn, filed before his eyes and made manifest in the quickened elves he met on his journeys, the dearth of magic, the loss of history and knowledge.  And when he closed his eyes?  He saw _her_ face.  Niyera.  And somehow, though he would scarcely admit it aloud and though it only heightened the guilt he already felt at failing his people, she was the most poignant of his regrets.

 

It was not guilt at her being the unwitting victim of his ploy to restore his people, though there was that.  Had it not happened, had his plan _not_ gone awry, he would have never met her, and if he had, he would have dismissed her out of hand.  And, that would have been his loss.  However he may have once tried to deny it or resist it, there was something redeemable in the Dalish, and she was a product of that.  She was the essence of it, of what her people could be.  And, it was not his guilt at falling in love with her, though there was that as well.  It would have been better, he had once told her, for both of them if he had not allowed it to happen.  But, as things were, he couldn’t find it in him to lament a single moment he’d spent with her.  He regretted the pain he had caused her, he regretted leaving her, but the love itself?  The woman?  He could not regret it or her.

 

She had awoken things in him that had long laid dormant, abandoned, and breathed new life into them.  He had never been able to put aside the burdens he bore, but being with her, being loved by her made them lighter.  She made him feel younger, as he had once felt in the days before his heart had grown heavy and his shoulders weighted with the myriad mistakes he had made.  And her touch seared his flesh, the most pleasant fire that he had ever known.  Consuming and wild, but all-encompassing and pure.  His aching for her was ever-present, a hollowness that sat at the center of his chest and threatened to swallow his heart.  If he allowed it, she would consume his every waking thought.  Rough fingers pressed into his brow before he smoothed his hand over the crown of his head, and it came to rest in the crook between his neck and shoulder.  He dug into the knots in the muscles there as his eyes turned again to the cube resting on his leg.

 

Would using the cube’s power be worth it?  Would _any_ of this **really** be worth it?  He owed the world so much, had done it such a disservice.  But, tearing it all down...who would it serve?  Who would it bring back?  Who would it erase?  --  He was so deep in his thoughts that when one of the logs in the fire collapsed, the sudden pop and crackling of embers into the air startled him and he flinched, watching the tiny motes of fire spiral higher and disappear with the smoke.  Would it be worth losing her forever?  He stared unseeing at the thin fingers of white that curled up from the fire and through the crack in the ceiling, watched the sparks die, and imagined for just a moment that each one that dimmed to nothing was the light of her life going out.  Extinguished.  Dark and naught but ash.  It suddenly became hard to swallow past the tightening at the back of his throat.

 

No, it really _wasn’t_ worth it.  And, it took thinking about it in just that way to reconcile him to that fact.  Regardless of how much _his_ people deserved all that he could do, he simply could _not_ trade her for the _possibility_ of restoring his world.  He knew, _oh how he knew_ , that to go back to her would be selfish.  To turn from his path.  But, he had been wrong when he thought he would be able to walk away.  It would also be humbling; he would finally have to confess.  Reveal himself.  What might she think?  Or say?  Or do?  He couldn’t be certain.  But, regardless of what he felt he owed the world, what he feared she might think of this truth, what good was any it without her?  It wasn’t.  And perhaps, if his world could not be restored, she could help him forge a new one.  

 

It was strange, her love.  Capable of rendering false gods asunder and turning true gods from their paths.  The decision was made.  He would begin the journey back to Skyhold at dawn.

 

* * *

 

The air inside the hood Niyera wore was stifling, made steamy by her own breath.  Breaths that came too quickly, that wheezed in her chest as she struggled to push them past the grip of the collar on her throat.  It was too tight, and it rubbed against raw skin every time she swallowed.  Around her, she heard shuffling, the clink of armor, the rattle of chains, and nothing else.  No voices, not even whispers.  No one had spoken to her in days, and were it not for the other ambient sounds, she’d have wondered if she’d lost her hearing to the perpetual ringing that filled her ears in the intervening moments of quiet.  She had seen no one during those days, either, the hood raised only enough to allow her to eat and drink occasionally.  But, she didn’t need to see them.  She knew who they were; she could feel it in the heat that radiated from their bodies when they neared, in the sparse touches that raked across her skin and scraped like roughened stones.  In the smell -- fevered sweat, coppery blood, fetid and ruined flesh.  And, the hum...the constant hum of red lyrium.

 

Against the advice of her companions, she’d almost immediately set out after Solas once Corypheus was defeated.  She had given enough to the Inquisition.  She had played their savior, an elven herald of Andraste, and she was now ready to be rid of the mantle...if only for a time.  She had no illusions that she could escape it forever; the mark still literally put the power to elevate or destroy people, organizations, nations even, right in the palm of her hand.  And, now that the immediate threat had passed, all sides were vying to control her.  Control her power.  Almost as if she was a liability now rather than a godsend.  She should have expected as much.  But, though it should have, none of it concerned her as much as finding Solas.  She had known it at Crestwood, seen it in his eyes in their last shared gaze at the remains of the Temple of Sacred Ashes.  He didn’t want to go.  He _did_ still love her.  But, he _had_ to, and she _had_ to know why.

 

The Well was little help in the days that followed Corypheus’s defeat.  The voices spoke to her, but the words were faint.  She felt as if there was something important in the whispered Elvhen that she couldn’t quite grasp, but despite her lack of understanding, they bestowed a certain sense of things.  Urgency.  Caution.  Desperation, though she couldn’t be certain if that was hers or Solas’s.  Her mind was perpetually in a state where she felt as if she’d forgotten something she’d always known or should know, and it was dangling just out of reach.  It made her antsy.  It made her careless.  Several weeks into tracking Solas, she began crossing paths with a straggling company of red Templars.  They were worn and near madness with the influence of the lyrium, however they were led by a pair of elves, of all things.  The armor they wore resembled that she’d seen on Abelas and his Sentinels, though it was darker, nearly seeming to absorb light rather than reflect it.  Finding them on the same path as her own once, perhaps twice, she could dismiss as coincidence.  But, when it became more frequent, it was obvious that their quarry was the same.

 

One night after the group had made camp, Niyera had crept closer than she normally would.  It would be helpful to know why they were pursuing Solas.  She managed to get close enough to hear the elves whispering as they stood by the fireside, but not close enough to understand them over the crackling of the wood that wasn’t quite dry.  It would have been best if she had left then, retreated and waited for another opportunity.  But, her need to know overpowered her intuition, and she worked her way just a bit closer.  An artifact, they discussed.  Elven of course.  She noted that when in the presence of the Templars, they spoke in the Common tongue.  Of how the artifact would help restore templars, elevate them, make them whole again.  And other times, they spoke Elvhen.  Another item of power, much like the orb had been, they said the artifact was. They spoke a name she was not familiar with -- Daern’thal -- and said it was his.  They also called never spoke Solas’s name, but she was troubled by the names they _did_ invoke.  The Betrayer.  The Trickster.  The Dread Wolf.  Fen’Harel.  

 

When the name had brushed her ears, her hackles rose, the fine hairs on the nape of her neck standing as goosebumps ran along her arms.  In her head, the Well’s voices became insistent, pulsing and prodding..  Perhaps she was wrong.  Perhaps it wasn’t Solas they pursued, and yet...there was a nagging.  A violent shiver ran through her, and she could no longer stand it; she felt as if her skin might peel from her body and crawl off on its own.  She needed to retreat.  To get away.  To find a way to focus the Well.  Just as she began to turn, for a terrifying split second, two pairs of elven eyes locked on hers, and that is when she felt it -- the sick churning that turned her stomach upside down and a depleted hollowness that made her knees wobble.  The power that hit her had no sound, only force, and her breath was pressed from her lungs as she sank to her knees, magic stolen by a Templar’s cleanse.  A sickly red glow and a pair of lyrium-studded hands were the last things she saw before her vision faded to black.

 

When she woke, it was with the collar around her neck, hood over her head, and her hands shackled before her.  There was a constant draining pull on her mana, no doubt the work of the collar, and though she had no memory of it, her joints ached as if she’d been the target of further cleanses from the Templars.  And, so it had gone for days.  Or, at least she imagined it had been only days.  Time had blurred into an inconstant thing -- first it seemed to have been forever that she was sat on her knees, straining to hear a voice, any voice, and then it seemed to fly by, the moments of calm between the rough handling from her captors growing shorter and shorter.  There was no interrogation, no demands, no explanations, regardless of how many times, how fervently she may have asked.  There were simply no voices at all.  Hard hands and harder shackles and chains simply pulled and tugged, led and bound.  But, always the same hard floor, the same musty smell.

 

All but the last time she was drug to her feet by uncaring hands, she was hauled from the place she’d been held to another.  Somewhere with cool, crisp air.  Fresh and clean.  She could smell the aqueous fragrance of deep-earth water.  She gulped in it, took ragged breaths, lungfuls of it.  The chill of the air on her skin was the sweetest kiss she’d known in quite some time, and it infused her weary body with renewed vigor.  Between the hands that held her, she struggled, twisting her body, using the leverage of her legs to try to upset the balance of those that held her.  They said nothing, nothing beyond near feral growls, and instead showed their displeasure with another wave of their dampening power.  With the anti-magic collar in place, there was little there to take, but the drain clawed through her veins, sifting for the dregs of the lyrium that remained, and the overwhelming pain of it made her cry out as they shoved her forward.  

 

In agony and panic, she felt herself falling, and she struggled to breathe, to think, to try to catch herself.  And yet, through it all, she heard a voice she recognized.  It was sharp and clear and as pure a thing as she had ever heard.  It was Solas’s voice, and she called out to him.

 

* * *

 

Slivers of ice clung to the woolen scarf wrapped over the lower half of his face and to the fringe of fur that edged the hood of his cloak.  The wind howled around him, long and forlorn, as it swept snow into the air and swirled it with its fingers.  He could barely see more than an arm’s length ahead through the storm that had abruptly risen around him, and despite the layers of clothes and boots he wore, the cold was biting into him as well as any beast might.  He paused, and as he stood, he couldn’t help the pestering feeling that this storm was not just a freak quirk of nature.  It came too suddenly, was too cold, and seemed to be pushing him closer to where his instincts told him the line of mountains that he’d been following were.  He flexed his gloved hand around the haft of his staff and set to moving again, no longer fighting against the storm, instead following where it led.

 

In scarcely an hour’s time, he found himself at the mouth of a cave.  The entrance was low, but once he made his way through, the floor sloped easily downward, opening up into a sizeable cavern beneath.  A gilded orb of magelight bobbed in his upturned hand as he made his way, and once the space opened up sufficiently, he cast the light upward.  It split as it ascended, and the many golden motes hovered halfway between his head and the cavern ceiling, casting warm illumination throughout the immediate area.  He could hear the sound of flowing water, but saw none, and he let his pack slip from his shoulder as he tugged the scarf down from his face and turned a cautious eye around.  There was something… A hollow sound, stone against stone, like small rocks tumbling down from a ledge caught his ears, and he pushed his hood down and took a few steps further into the cavern.  

 

Immediately to his left looked to be a diverging passage, and to his right was a split in the cavern floor, with the shelf beyond opening into a trio of dark tunnels.  Everything echoed:  every scuff of his boots, every pebble, every tap of his staff against the stone.  A shiver raked down his spine, entirely unrelated to the temperature, and his eyes narrowed as energy began to collect on the fingertips of his free hand.  --  He felt it before he heard it, the subtle disruption of the air, the faint thrum of magic he knew as well as his own heartbeat.  Carefully, subtly, he reached to loosen the clasp of his cloak, and when the first crackle energy hit the air, he spun to meet it.  The heavy lined wool of his cloak flared as he spun on his heel, the fabric fluttering from his shoulders as if buffeted by a breeze as he lifted his staff to parry the arc of lightning aimed at his back.  The impact sent vibrations through the wood and straight up his arm as his magic clashed with the other, and the spell rebounded back to the caster.  

 

The mage before him was a blur, and shards of the stone wall exploded beneath the reflected magic even as Solas flung out a hand, casting a fistful of silvery white energy at the fleeing figure.  For an instant, the attacker was illuminated:  a slim elf, raven hair, dark skin, and armor as black as the void.  He barely had time to register the information before the vibrant hum of an arcane blade caught his attention, and he dodged under and away as he whirled around, a fist of force cast out as he came to face his next assailant.  There was a shrill cry as the armored figure was thrown back, and he had but a moment to regroup before he felt a tickle of electricity on his skin.  Too slow to dodge, the spear caught his hip and spun him, and he snarled at the pain as he was driven to one knee.  Heat ignited along his spine and washed over his scalp as his anger rose, and when his vision went white, he saw a flare of silver flash dully over his enemy’s armor as his eyes were gilded by energy.  Without rising, he slammed his fist against the ground, and webs of power crawled and scraped across the stone in a fractured circle around him.  

 

Before his eyes, the advancing figure disappeared, Fade stepping out of harm’s way, and one corner of Solas’s mouth hitched upward.  He waited.  His head dropped as seconds ticked by, time slowing to a painful crawl in which he heard every sound around him, regardless of how faint.  He felt as much as heard the heartbeat of his assailant as he materialized at his back, and when Solas rose, it was with all the grace of a dancer and the fury of a warrior.  Low to the ground, his fingers trailed tendrils of green energy as he turned and rose in tandem, sweeping a scythe of pure force in an upward arc.  The attacker was caught squarely and pitched into the air.  All at once, time rushed forward, and a sharp whistle shot through the cavern as Solas sliced the air with his staff in an overhead strike.  The impact of the staff on the attacker’s armor splintered it, and the resulting burst of energy slammed the broken body into the cavern floor.

 

With a short but obviously annoyed glance, Solas threw the lower half of his staff aside with a sneer and stepped over the body at his feet.  His eyes immediately searched through the wan light for the second assailant, but it was a voice echoing from across the cavern that caught his attention.

 

“Fen’Harel!” the elf called, his shout reverberating throughout the enclosed space.  His opponent stood at the edge on other side of the cavern, across the divide in the cavern floor.  With his shoulders rolled back and squared, Solas stalked to ledge to gaze his enemy on the other side with eyes still lit with a haze of raw energy.  “That invocation is one seldom survived.  Are you certain you wish to continue?” he asked, the slight cant of his head falling in opposition to the slant of his lips.  He could see that the elf was laboring for breath, yet he stood unwavering in his challenge.  “You have something that does not belong to you, Dread Wolf.”  Solas’s tone remained even as he spoke, though his mouth curled in an uneven smirk, “I have many things that do not expressly belong to me.  You will need to be more specific.”  The elf strode as well as he was able along divide until he stood directly across from him, and in the light, Solas could better see his armor, his face.  The marks of Daern’thal’s service were evident on both.

 

“Ah, yes.  I see,” he finally said, before continuing on, “and you expect to take it back from me?”  The shake of the elf’s head was slight.  “No, I expect you to eagerly return it,” the other said without even the slightest hint of levity.  Before he could help himself, Solas chuckled, a low and mirthless sound.  “That is an ambitious expectation.  Perhaps you will be content enough to escape with your life,” and with no further concern, he turned and began back the way he'd come.  From the other side of the cavern, noise of a scuffle rose, and out of his peripheral vision, he saw a deep crimson glow begin to seep from one of the side passages.  He didn’t turn, but even at this distance, he felt the pulse of a dampening cleanse and heard the scream that followed.   _That_ was what stopped him dead in his tracks and made him turn his head as the skin at the nape of his neck prickled.  

 

Not only was the voice familiar, but so was the magic that belonged to it.  Faint though it was, its essence yet remained.  Every drop of his blood went cold as he stared with unbelieving eyes as a pair of Templars drug a hooded and shackled body into view.  He made a quick study of the captive’s form -- a fringe of white hair crept from beneath the edge of the hood, the clothes were recognizable.  But, it was the voice that drove the frightful truth home; the Templars shoved her forward, and on weak legs, she stumbled and called his name before the impact of the fall knocked the breath out of her.   _Niyera_.  Nearly forgetting himself, his first instinct was to bolt toward her, and he rolled his shoulders in an attempt to hide the flinch his body betrayed as he struggled to rein it in.  If the smug slant of the elf’s lips was any indication, Solas had not been wholly successful.

 

The Templars scooped her up under her arms, forcing her to sit upright on her knees before they yanked the hood off.  Niyera squinted against the light in the cavern, dim though it was, as if it had been some time since she had seen any at all.  “Solas?” she questioned hesitantly as her eyes adjusted.  When her gaze settled fully on him and their eyes met, he saw a flash of relief and heard the near hollow croak of her breath catching in her chest.  “Solas.”  The way she choked out his name, half whisper and half desperate plea, told him that she was on the verge of tears.  The muscles in his neck and jaw drew taut with the effort to keep his expression impassive, and he slid his eyes back to the elf as he spoke, “And you think she is a worthy trade for the artifact?”  Measured strides took him to the edge of the chasm, where he stood purposefully avoiding Niyera’s gaze.  “If you know enough to try to use her against me, you should also know that I left her months ago.”  The elf’s expression never changed, hovering in that detestable smirk as he passed an errant glance between Solas and Niyera.  “So, she is of no value to you, then?” he asked, and Solas finally allowed his eyes to drift back to the Inquisitor.  Apprehension had stolen over her gaze, but there was something else as well -- trust, confidence, faith.  

 

“None,” Solas managed to say without even the slightest inflection in his voice as he watched the word and its implication wash over Niyera.  The blow he’d dealt her was obvious in the way the surety of his presence drained from her eyes, and her features fell.  Her shoulders visibly sagged as her eyes glazed with unshed tears, and she yanked vainly on her arms as she called, “Solas...ma lath, please.”  The elf and his Templars may have heard it as a plea for help, for his aid, but he knew by the way her voice trembled and how the breath after hitched that she wasn’t asking for his help.  She was mourning him, the love she had hoped he still bore for her.  And after this was settled, he would spend the rest of her life making amends for the lie he’d just told, but just now, he clung with a tenuous grip to his expressionless facade.  The elf across from him made a production of his heavy sigh, raising a hand to gesture as he spoke, “If that is the case, I may do with her as I see fit.  I think I would find her more pleasing to the eye without that collar.”  A third Templar strode from the passage behind Niyera, though what he held was obscured from view.  

 

“One must still take precautions, however,” the elf said, and as the Templar passed around his comrades, the branding iron he held came startlingly into view.  Solas could not mask the way his eyes widened or how the blood drained from his face.  And, the change in his expression did not go unnoticed by Niyera, who soon caught sight of the iron.  Her reaction was instantaneous; her voice split the air, shrill screams that echoed as she bucked violently against the hands that held her.  “No!” was all the managed to say, over and over, the rest of the sounds unintelligible as she fought.  In the chaos, Solas lurched instinctively forward, foot sliding on the loose stones at the chasm’s edge, and he only barely managed pull himself back, emotionally and physically, to keep from tumbling over the edge.  He could only watch as she wrenched one arm free of her captors, backpedaling, then kicking out at them as they wrestled to get her in hand.  In another time, he’d have been capable of instantly traversing the chasm, ripping the Templars and elf apart before they had time blink, but as he was, he was helpless at this range.

 

It was obvious that her strength was quickly waning, and her eyes, pupils blown wide, shot to him in a panic.  “Solas!” she cried, the last of her voice spent to call his name before she went hoarse.  But, in that last clear note, what he heard tore him apart.  Betrayal, evident in her inflection.  Fear, ringing out in the high pitch.  A hushed litany of _no_ s still ghosted from her lips as one of the Templar’s lunged at her, struggling and finally succeeding in pinning her to the ground as he sat astride her waist and another straddled her legs.  A gauntleted fist in her hair craned her head up, and fresh scrapes on her cheek and forehead seeped blood as she began to crumble.  “No, please, no,” she rasped out, still fighting to turn her face, only able to move her head as her arms were trapped beneath her.  The tears that had stood unshed in her eyes moments earlier were flowing freely, leaving pale streaks through the dirt and blood smudged on her skin.

 

Solas couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t be sure, but his blood may also have frozen in his veins.  His entire world narrowed, constricted, stopped, and he could see only her.  Only the abject terror in her eyes.  As if sensing his acute attention, Niyera’s eyes snapped to his, pupils so wide and dark that barely any color remained, and she choked out a pair of words in a raw voice:  “Kill me.”  They were almost too faint to carry the distance to his ears, but he could read them in the movement of her lips, recognized the asking in her gaze.  The thought pierced him straight through to his heart, and he began to shake his head.  As at last the final Templar began to kneel at her head, tortured sounds, broken and terrified, poured from her lips.  She summoned enough of her voice for one last scream as an armored hand gripped her chin, “If you ever loved me, _please_ , kill me now!”  Solas’s breath left him all at once as the silvered sheen on his eyes dissipated, and he was left staring with grey-blue eyes at one of his private horrors made real.  He hadn’t realized there were tears on his cheeks until he turned his head and felt the air cool the damp paths on his skin.  “Stop!  No more!” he called, relenting as the branding iron hovered mere inches from her skin.

 

“The artifact is yours,” Solas conceded as he gazed at the elf, who returned his stare and stood poised with an outstretched hand.  Without another word, he turned and retrieved the cube from his pack, eyes trained solely on Niyera as he made his way back to the chasm’s edge.  She was shaking, a full-body tremble that couldn’t be stilled by the weight of the bodies that held her.  He saw her lips moving, heard the rustling rasp of her voice as she struggled to speak.   _Thank you_ is what he heard, what he read on her lips.  He tried to offer her an encouraging smile, forced the corners of his mouth to lift before he turned his gaze back to the elf.  Held momentarily aloft, the cube rose from Solas’s palm as he focused on it, and with a simple tilt of his gaze, it drifted slowly across the chasm and into the waiting hand of his opponent.  The elf turned the cube carefully over in his hands, as if inspecting it, studying it.  When the elf’s eyes rose to Solas’s, a broad, unsettling smile crept across his lips as he held the cube out in his hands as if in offering.  

 

Time distorted then, it seemed, with everything happening both all at once _and_ so slowly that Solas witnessed each agonizing moment drag by in perfect clarity.  With a tilt of his hands, the elf let the cube roll from his fingertips, and it dropped like a stone into the maw of the chasm.  Solas had just enough time to register confusion before panic gripped him, and he pushed his gaze to Niyera in time to hear her scream and see the Templar’s branding iron press into her forehead.  Abruptly, her voice died as the sigil was seared into her flesh, and something within him broke.  In the same instant, a tremor ran through the stone underfoot, and a virid luminescence erupted around Niyera, flaring out to fill the cavern and consume his vision.  He felt it when the discharge of energy hit him soundly in the middle of his chest then spread to envelope his entire body.  

 

He had never thought to contemplate what would happen to the mark if Niyera were to be made Tranquil.  Why would he?   The idea was inconceivable.  Even before he knew her, if he had never loved her, he could not -- _would_ not -- have done such a thing.  However, as his misplaced power unraveled itself from her body and wove into his, the way of it made sense to him.  While she had never known that the power was his, she did know that it was not her own.  Rather, it was something that had tethered itself to her, and when her own bond to the Fade was severed, his power was left without an anchor and fled its mooring.  The recoil as it snapped back into his body staggered him, and thread-thin veins of energy raced across his skin, sinking beneath as they crawled upward along his neck only to reemerge as a livid white incandescence in his eyes.  It had all happened in the space of a breath, and the brutality of it caused a momentary detachment.  There was only his power and his rage, and they propelled him in much the same way as the explosion had send the Templar that had wielded the branding iron sailing over the ledge and into the open span of the chasm below.

 

With his feet barely skimming the cavern floor, Solas strode out over the vast nothingness and watched the red glow of the body until it was swallowed by the darkness.  He turned his attention then to the remaining Templars, who were still struggling to stand.  His eyes flashed, cold and white, and the ruined crimson bodies of what once had been men solidified, shifting to stone.  A twist of his fingers on the air speared each with a shard of lightning that shattered the statues into little more than dust.  As his feet came to rest on the ledge at the other side of the chasm, his head canted as his eyes adroitly scanned the area for the orchestrator of this nightmare.  He found the elf slumped at the base of the cavern wall, crumpled against the slope like a paper doll.  The narrowing of Solas’s eyes made the shifting white glare of energy there all the more menacing, and the flare that lit his gaze leaked from the corners as curls of jet-hued smoke.  

 

He didn't expressly remember crossing the distance to the elf, but all the same, he found himself standing before him.  Chains of crackling energy bound his arms, holding him steady on his feet as the man lacked the ability to stand on his own -- a broken marionette.  Eye to eye with his opponent now, Solas lifted the elf’s chin with a pair of fingertips.   Somehow, the villain still managed to laugh, a wet and struggling sound that caused blood to bubble on his lips.   “Tell me.  Has this been worth it?” Solas inquired, every inch of his body aching to flay the elf, skin from muscle and muscle from bone.  As he was able, the elf nodded.  “Every moment of your suffering is worth a hundred deaths, Betrayer.”  One corner of Solas’s mouth curled in a feral sneer.   “Would that I could make you feel each one,” he lamented as he thrust a fist of pure force into the elf’s gut, sundering armor, skin, muscle, and bone alike.  The elf screamed, choking on a throatful of blood that painted his lips.  

 

“This will have to do,” Solas offered as he twisted his hand in the air, commanding the force buried within the elf to mimic the movement.  The sounds that left the wretched soul in his clutches were inhuman and visceral, and they died in increments as he drowned in his own blood, perished with bits of his own ruined entrails stuck in his throat.  He never looked away, steadily holding the elf’s gaze as he twitched through the last of his death throes, and once the body sagged in his grip, he shoved it back against the cavern wall.  It slid bonelessly to the ground as Solas turned from the sight, and when his eyes fell upon Niyera, he once again felt the solid ground beneath his feet and the energy rife in his eyes fled in wisps of smoke.  The rage in his chest soured to shock, grief, and he closed the distance between them with a handful of long, hurried strides.  She was in a heap on the ground, curled in on herself so that he could only see the curve of her back, the fall of her hair, and the pool of blood that was slowly growing around her.  There was no sound -- no sobs or gasps -- nothing at all except the soft wheeze of her breath.  And, he could not remember the last time he’d been so afraid.  When he reached out to touch her back, his hand trembled and he hesitated.  Instead, he spoke, “Niyera?” with his voice low and tremulous.

 

She stirred, lifting her head to gaze straight ahead for a moment before her face turned to him.  It would be a few moments before he realized the wounded sound he’d heard had come from his own lips; he was too overwhelmed.  “Hello, Solas,” she said, so very simply, without inflection and in a voice that was hers but not _her_ .  He couldn’t find his breath.  It had gotten lost somewhere in his chest, perhaps fallen into the same chasm that seemed to have swallowed his heart.  Shaking hands held her face, her cheeks against his palms as he gazed into eyes that were flat, calm and placid, and utterly devoid of the light that had once brightened them.  Staring into the eyes that had once held him in such affection, such tenderness, lust and love and tenderness, the stark reality settled over him:   _now_ he had lost _everything_ that had meant _anything_ to him.  “Vhenan,” he heard himself whisper as he stroked a thumb through the trail of blood on her cheek, brushed the tips of his long fingers beneath her ears.  

 

He knew it was a wish in vain, but he kept hoping to see her smile, the small bend of her lips she gave just before she would lean in to kiss him.  Instead, she held his gaze with a nonplussed and vacant stare, saying only, “I had been looking for you.  I did not expect that you would find me instead.”  Swallowing past the tightness in his throat, he spoke as he smoothed her disheveled hair back from her brow, “I was coming back...to Skyhold...to you.”  She nodded only briefly, saying, “Ah.  I’d not accounted for that possibility,” before she glanced down to her arm.  It was the source of the blood spreading beneath her knees, apparently caused when his power ripped from her body.  “I can’t seem to stop the bleeding,” she said, beginning to pass her eyes back to his when she paused at the rend in his side.  Blood stained the flank of his sweater, and it was torn through to reveal the wound beneath.  “You’re injured.  It looks deep.  You should see to that soon,” she said as her eyes completed their journey to his.  When she met his gaze, she found tears on his cheeks, dripping from his pointed chin.  “You’re crying.  Does it hurt that badly?”  

 

He couldn’t help the bitter laugh that parted his lips, and he bowed his head as the sound dissolved into sobs that made his shoulders shake.  Yanking at the scarf around his neck, he struggled to untangle it, and once free of it, he began to carefully wrap her mangled arm.  He worked slowly, meticulously, giving himself time to try to stymie the torrent of tears he felt powerless to stop.  Beyond the grief of his loss was the knowledge that once again, he was the cause of her misfortune.  Her pain.  Everything he did, everything he touched fell to ruin, perverted by his pride, bent under his inflexible expectations, destroyed by his fervor to raise and glorify the world he had once known.  The victims his hubris claimed were always the undeserving.  Those he tried to protect.  Those he loved.  He was a blight.  As he tied off the end of the scarf, he hauled in a shuddering breath as he rested his forehead on the curve of her shoulder.  He felt Niyera stiffen under the contact, but he couldn’t bring himself to move, so they sat in silence until she finally spoke.  

 

“It’s alright, Solas.  I only feared this because I didn’t realize how it would actually be.  I feel much more at ease now,” the monotone cadence of her words struck him like the staccato beating of a drum, and he withered as the last words she spoke as truly herself echoed through him.   _If you ever loved me_ , please, _kill me now!_  She had preferred the idea of death over the possibility of being made Tranquil.  And, he had let her down by failing to prevent it.  Would he now also fail her by denying her last request?  He lifted his head from her shoulder and wiped at his cheeks with the heel of his hands before he took a deep breath.  “May I try something, v-vhenan?” he asked with a dearth of hope that betrayed itself in the volume of his voice, in the way his voice stuttered over the endearment.  “Of course,” she answered, and she sat perfectly still as he raised his hands and laid his fingertips against her temples.  

 

He was doubtful that he could repair this damage; even if he had been at his full power, he wasn’t certain of the process and its viability.  But he had to try.  He let his eyes slip closed as a faint glow was born beneath his fingers, shrouding Niyera’s forehead as his brow lined in concentration.  The search was thorough and painstaking as he sought any shred of her magical essence, even the tiniest thread would have sufficed.  But, there was nothing.  Only a vacant space remained where she should have been, and he felt the last dwindling spark of hope in his chest wink from existence.  A shudder ran through him as he opened his eyes, and he pushed his fingers back into her hair, thumbs tracing the long line of her ears as he met her placid, unchanging gaze.  “And, may I kiss you?  Just once,” he asked, hardly a whisper, and she blinked dumbly at him.  For long moments, she didn’t answer, as if she were trying to make sense of the request, but in the end, she nodded.  “If you wish.  I know I enjoyed your doing so previously.”  

 

The faint upturn of his lips could hardly be called a smile, but he struggled to hold even a hint of the expression as he leaned in.  “So you did,” he said in return before he pressed his lips to hers.  Though she responded with appropriate movements, the embrace of lips, dance of tongues, the motions were hollow.  There was no passion, only muscle memory, and when they parted, he sighed across her lips before drawing her into a hug.  “Ar lath ma, vhenan,” he said as he gently slid his hand beneath her hair to grip the back of her neck and tilted his mouth against her ear.  She didn’t return the embrace, only sat awkwardly still as he took in a deep breath of her scent.  “I used to love you as well.  Not so very long ago,” she said in return, and his arms tightened on her as he buried her face in the crook of her neck to hide the tears that once again stained his cheeks.  “Ar lasa mala revas, ma lath,” he breathed as he released a shard of force upward into the base of her skull.  It would have been quick, painless, and her entire body tensed for only a moment before she went utterly limp in his arms.  

 

Clinging to the warmth of her body, he held his breath, and the bottled grief spread through his chest like fire.  Fire that was caught in the pull of the black void of his heart; it drained all the heat from his limbs, left him cold and weak and shaking.  And, when he could no longer fight it, his breath burst out of him in a ragged sob, a wail that was interrupted only by the breath he took in order to howl his grief.  The sound folded back on him as it rebounded off the cavern walls, and he was trapped in a cocoon of torment, his tortured sobs the only accompaniment to the shattering of his soul.


End file.
